“It moves round and round
The machine is cool and makes this sound!
It can mend any cloth just give it a try!
Course it can’t mend a broken heart, now don’t cry!”
One of the most marvellous machines we all used to have in our homes was the majestic sewing machine!
Did you know that it was literally a dream!?
read on!
Those days the best time pass for housewives was embroidery!
A stitch in time literally saves more than a dime!
The clothes we used to get used to have long sleeves which had to be stitched! Those days we used to outgrow our school uniforms at the drop of a hat!
Which is why we were always given oversized pants and shirts which we would soon ‘grow’ into!
If the pants become short then mom used unfold the bottom and fold them again and stitch them over! Then we would apply iron over it to ‘hide’ the previous fold!
The shirt pocket of the spot white uniform was the first to come off!
If you have not used the shirt for long you can simply rip the whole thing out but then if it is even a little old then the part of the shirt behind the pocket would be cleaner than the rest of the shirt! Then it would stand out like a, well torn pocket on a white shirt!
So we would carefully preserve the shirt pocket in our pant pocket and give it to mom who would stitch them back! If by mistake she forgets to change the thread then it is a disaster! The lining would be another colour which would again stand out!
During the holidays mom would mend the curtains and other torn clothes which still looked usable!
Sometimes dad would take it up and do a great job too! Since it was basically a machine, he was pretty good at it!
I used to marvel at that machine! How the pedalling used to spin the whole contraption! How occasionally the belt used to come out and we used to put it back in! Sometimes the belt would break and then my dad would repair that and fix it back much to the delight of his audience which was usually my brother and me!
Occasionally he used to put the oil in the central place and the sound would reduce and the machine would be more smooth!
It used to be a delight to see how the needles used to go up and down and how the machine gobbled up the separated clothes from one side and then join them up! Things like bobbin and threads were the technical terms we used to be proud of knowing!
Even placing those things and re threading the needle was an expert work done by mom and dad to their amazed fans!
Later on though they got a motor which used to get connected to the machine and the need for pedalling was not there! We were almost sad to see the pedal go!
Each posting we used to go, we used to eagerly wait for the sewing machine to get delivered and assembled! After assembling all other things when the sewing machine used to get assembled we knew that we had settled in the new house albeit temporarily!
Till the last, my mom used to do some stitching or the other though the major work was usually done by dad. The amount of stitching she had done on her favourite gown was incredible! This in spite of having so many new ones!
Of course one day the machine became silent; forever…still the memories of that constant railway track like sound makes me smile…
Now of course the stitching is limited to needle and thread and smaller things like a button or so which usually my daughter and I do in our house! The other day I was searching for a needle in the house realising that mom would have kept it in that little shelf of her sewing machine! My daughter has started even the woolen stitching which of course is another blog!
But (he he!) what is truly incredible, is that the idea for the sewing machine came to inventor Elias Howe in a dream in 1845!
He had been musing over the idea of a machine with a needle that would go through cloth, but hadn’t managed to figure out exactly how it would work.
However, a particularly lucid dream saw him about to be cooked by cannibals, while they were dancing around a fire, waving their spears!
He noticed that at the top of each spear was a small hole, with the up-and-down motion of the spears and hole remaining fixed in his memory when he awoke!
He realised that this could be the key to a machine that would work – having the hole in the needle close to the point, instead of the traditional other end, which enabled the mechanical sewing machine to become a technological possibility!
Dream also was the coming together of Deadpool and wolverine! The movie was good one time watch! A quick sketch on a busy day and when under the weather…
Now need sleep so bad!
Shubh ratri!
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